Part II:
1912
Out of a perpetually dark nothingness came the gentle sighs of a whispering North Sea.
James's fingers quivered.
A subtle little jolt in his resting knuckles that thawed the tingling numbness in his still hands, buzzing warmly with a gradual rush of life.
Making him faintly aware of the soft sunny warmth of light washing over his face, and the splendid coziness of something woolish underneath him.
His haven of unconsciousness chased away by theplayfullullaby of the low morning tide,distinctly less carnal than a midnight surge.
And judging by the familiar caressing passes of the ocean waves, he guessed it to be early morning.
Slowly coming to from a sleep that felt too much like death, James inhaled deeply, long and indulging, as if he'd waited a century to finally take one more precious breath.
Taking into his lungs the dreamy scent of meadowsweet shale sea cliffs, almond spices of hawthorn blooms, and woody English ivy kissed by misty sea-air.
Fragrant mementos of springtime at home and everything green he never thought he'd breathe in again.
His fair lashes sleepily batting open with a lambent gaze like the soft satin blue of chalcedony in fair dawning sunlight.
His eyes wandering from the plushiness of his pillow to the lofty vaulted ceilings above him, alight by the large sash windows of the room, through which the sunlight liked to play against dark green and gilded damask wallpaper entwined with cream honeysuckle blooms. Aged and gloomily Victorian.
Have I truly died at last? Is this heaven?
Reaching for his brass open-faced Elgin watch lying on the bedside table, James blinked repeatedly to clear his dully aching head and make sense of the blurred numerals doubling in his vision.
"T-two-twenty...as I should've expected...No...hang on..."
Sitting up in bed properly, James turned the pocket watch around, realizing he'd been looking at it the wrong side up...and now that he wasn't so wonky all a quiver...he'd dare say the number 2, upon closer inspection, looked more like a 7 now.
7:20 in the morning.
It seemed the happy little blighter was finally ticking away again.
"Chuffing hell, what a headcase this duffer is," James whispered in disbelief, never finding the absolute normal functioning of a pocket watch so peculiar.
But not so peculiar as the way he was dressed now, like nothing proper to be in bed, his double-breasted officer's coat torn and hanging in tatters at the lapels and sleeves, as if he'd turned into some wolfman last night going Captain Ahab against the ocean.
Had he really done it after all?
Had he beat his wager against death again, and managed to right time by coming back to 1912?
If that were true, then where was Titanic?
Why was everything so serenely quiet around him, when his heart beating in his ears was anything but?
The only life in the room being the soft breezes dancing in from the window next to him, open and undressed to allow as much of the sea-air in as possible.
Carrying the scent of lavender sachets and bergamot from wardrobe closets, and playing in the fluttering muslin curtains falling over brass rods from ceiling to floor, allowing a breathtaking view of a dreamy coastline.
And watching the shadow and light play through the leaves of the Irish oak outside his window, James might've believed there was no trouble at all in the world.
He might've felt overjoyed to be home again and so much at peace. A peace he hadn't felt since the first day he'd caught an ocean wave between his toes, and so many other delightful childhood memories he remembered in Scarborough.
But he was wet, and shivering, and he'd just jumped off a cliff after being trapped 110 years into the future.
And he was unmistakably alone and needing answers.
Reminiscing about his local and other such personal indulgences could wait.
James started to scoot out of bed to a ballad of curses and winces.
Because in all his 10 years of being at sea, sleeping on just about any plank or a hammock in pretty well any typhoon the sea could throw at him, he never remembered waking up beaten so black-and-blue.
As if he'd been tangling in bed with a sack of potatoes all night, and the sack had won.
Bleeding Christ.
He knew he slept like the dead in any which-way, thanks to cramming all of his full extent into tiny sleeping spaces inside every-which ship, but nothing a few cracks here and there of his neck couldn't fix.
But this was supremely heinous.
Though what the blazes should he have expected after popping off a cliff?
"Ah, bloody and bugger," he moaned in a whisper, as he worked the tension this way and that out of his shoulders.
An anvil of a headache crushing down on him like a hangover.
James worked at the tangle of sheets and covers wrapped around his thigh, before standing from the bed.
Undoing the last of his brass buttons, the only two hanging on by a few sparse navy threads. One stray button dropping with a dead clink onto the planked wooden flooring underneath his bed, as he tore the lapels of his ruined officer's coat open to expose his damp dress shirt underneath.
Dropping his coat onto the floor next, his white starched collar and dress shirt followed, and then the undershirt he'd worked over his head. His hardened chest and buffed arms flexing, as off went his ruined and unpolished dress shoes.
And then starting at the couplet of buttons just below his navel, James stopped suddenly, just shy of completely undoing his trousers.
The grisly consequences of traveling back and forth across a century coming down hard on him.
The foundering of Titanic.
That ghastly museum with its only ghastlier gift shop.
The most darling eyes he'd ever known gazing into his, as dying sunlight set fire to the torch of Lady Liberty.
The sea raging and crashing below him as he looked down into it, holding the beloved he was so afraid to let go of, as he put all his gamble to save her on nothing but a diamond and the hope that he was right about it all in the end.
Millie...Cor blimey, what have I done?
James's heart skipped, remembering vividly and all at once that the love of hisfirst-second-and-now-thirdlife had died again as he held her last night.
And waking up alone in his family's guest bedroom was the aftermath of him doing something desperately reckless to rewind time for her.
If that was the way of it, and he had truly made it back to 1912, where was Millie?
Had he really come here alone...or had he done something more terrible than he intended by reversing time?
In his grave despair over losing her, had he ensured nothing but the self-fulfilling heartache of losing Millicent for good when he jumped from the cliffs of Bitter Tears Cross?
No, no this is all wrong, it is.
The whole point of him dying in such a brutal way was to save Millie in the end, not just himself.
Was that not the way of this morbid contract? One life for another?
Had it not happened that way with him and Millicent on Titanic?
Burning and betrayed in the heart-pounding silence of unanswered questions, James eagerly searched his officer's coat pocket forLe Cœur de la Mer.
Unable to stop fretting about what he might've done to Millie, and why she wasn't there with him, and what consequences he'd brought upon them both by "making a deal", so to speak, with a cursed diamond, who never played fair, being an inanimate object with no conscience, and whose only going rate appeared to be the blood of its keeper.
James found the bloody thing safe and sound in his inner pocket. Unscathed, of course. Peacefully glimmering in his hand like the mirroring surface of night ocean waves. Silent with its untold secrets of why it had picked him and Millie. Unbothered by the violence of last night or how greatly it had thus far ruined his life.
Leaving him only to guess at a supernormal phenomenon he still didn't understand.
He'd done everything as he'd done it before on Titanic.
He had the diamond on him the night he died beside Milicent.
Where had she gone to in the end, if not here safely with him?
Or...Did reversing time mean that she was also stirring awake somewhere in the future, in her cozy apartment with the Captain, missing the quiet whistling of James's morning tea kettle exactly 3 days before he was actually supposed to arrive in her gift shop?
Or did it mean that she was now apart of his world too, just waking up as he was, in some place like Downton, perhaps? Or somewhere as a stewardess again aboard a ship across the world-stirring awake from a vivid and confusing dream of clocks, hot cocoa, and perpetually rainy weather-as she watched the sun rise from her porthole window, trying her hardest not to look down too long at the ocean beneath her?
James hoped to God that it was the latter.
That she was still there in her apartment, safe and sound in the future where he'd first found her. Where she'd be able to continue her life as Miss Emily Amberflaw, and all the freedoms that came with it. One of those being that he could now never show up in her gift shop and cock things up for her.
She'd live on fully and happily now without ever knowing him.
Because every time Millicent had known him, she inevitably found herself dying in his arms, and James would not stand for letting it happen again.
So, however it was that James had undone time and found himself in Scarborough, there'd be no bewailing out of him for it, if it meant Millie was safe from this egregious cycle of death.
"Pardon me calling like this on no notice at all, Christopher, but I couldn't think of anyone else to help me with him. He listens to you. And I'm desperate to make him listen toanyone."
James's attention was stolen from theHeart of the Oceanin his hands to the desperate pleas of a woman somewhere outside the room, making him aware that he wasn't alone in this house anymore.
Miss Annie?
And finding out so suddenly that a madam was present in the house while none of his clothes were at hand, James quickly snatched open the oakwood doors of the guest armoire and searched for a men's dressing gown to wrap around his half nude person.
"Now then, what's happened? I left Grimsby fast as I could get away when I heard the news," the voice of James's older brother matched their stepmum's tone of urgency. "Where's papa gone to now?"
"You've only just missed him," Annie sounded out of breath, having just fought the good fight to keep John Moody from walking out their street door. "He's gone back to Liverpool. Our poor Mr. Evans and I couldn't hold him off. Says he won't come home until somebody at White Star answers him about your brother. Won't open up his lug ole's for me or anyone else who tries to reason with him."
"Heard summat of it from Mr. Evans on the drive over. How long's it been since he's gotten away from ye?"
"He's been gone not long. An hour, little less, little more. I reckon he's still dawdling around for the train, if you hurry," Annie told him. "I'm so afraid for him, Chris. He's not treating himself well. You should see the state of him. He won't eat, pens letters to White Star all afternoon for James's sake, and not too often comes out from his study. And when he does walk the house, he walks around bogeyed like the living dead, asking only for the morning paper. It's leaving me fair geffered!"
"Now, mum,gefferedisn't kind at all," Christopher corrected her. "Chuffin'pissedis more tellin' the truth of it! That nanglin' White Star nobbut wrote me more of theirdistinguishedwords, and I'll 'appen papa won't mind another joining him off to Liverpool."
"And what do you reckon playin' pop with them would fix in the end, I wonder," Annie had him know.
"Is there still no word from our James?" Christopher hoped against hope.
"Nay, lad, they won't tell us owt, I'm afraid," she informed him regretfully. "They say their inquiry is still underway, and they'll tell us nowt of the missing crew and passengers."
"Like the devil, they won't. He'smybrother. White Star won't throw me off so easy. Let themtryto play yonderly in telling me what really happened to James," Christopher muttered under his breath, taking back his Danbury hat from Evans again and marching toward the door. "In a bit then. I'm off to find papa. If he comes back ere I do, send me word straightaway."
James gently pulled open the bedroom door and quietly stepped out into the hallway on the loft overlooking the reception foyer, where he could hear their muffled exchange more clearly. His bare footfall so soundless, that he was undetected by both his brother and stepmother in the echoing foyer below.
Catching sight of Christopher just as he reached the door, turning to leave one last instruction for Mr. Evans, "Mind my father while I'm away. He's right out of his head worrying over James. If he comes back, tell him it'smewho says he's not to leave again. I don't care if you must tie him down in his study, keep him there until I return."
"Very good, Mr. Moody."
But just as James's jaw parted to call his brother's name and clear the grave misunderstanding about his whereabouts, a knock sounded strongly at the door.
And seeing that the knocking was now yet another obstacle blocking his warpath to White Star, Christopher was in no mood for social niceties, and was the first to beat Mr. Evans in flinging the door open to confront the unlucky caller, who dared time his mithering knock so perfectly.
Whomever Christopher William Moody expected at the door, it was not the stoddy fellow dillydallying on the snek.
Caught red-handed in the act of changing his mind, the man at the Moodys' door froze. His deeply brown eyes appearing only deeper as his widened stare met Christopher's. Hints of fiery copper flirting with the warm chestnut brown in his strong gaze. His body turned away at a peculiar angle, as if he had suddenly decided to ding-dong-ditch the bell and make a run for it, before Christopher jumped on the door and beat him to opening it.
If Christopher could bet a guess, he'd say the man was not much older than him, and certainly much too old to be playing boyish games like bell-ditching.
"Sir?" Christopher's sandy brow rose at the dauntless caller's obvious plan to abandon ship.
"Sir," the caller echoed the greeting, straightening his awkward posture and formally tipping his bowler hat to his host, in minimal propriety.
"Our door isnota museum," Christopher informed the ding-dong-ditcher. "Is there nowt else better you can do, mate, but pester folks?"
"If you don't want me," the brussen dark-haired man answered him-with a little bite of snark to boot- "I'd be happy to go."
"Why would I want you?" Christopher asked the peculiar dark-haired visitor, his handsome face furrowing tighter, confused by the hint of a Welsh accent playing somewhere in the man's words.
"You invited me."
"I did not."
"Did so."
"I assure you, I did not," Christopher reiterated firmly. "I do not entertain."
"I amneverentertained."
"For the love of-Go on then, man, what is your business here?"
"I was asked here by one Mr. John Moody."
The uncanny caller sized up the tall, imposing, but softly blue-eyed Englishman guarding the door in front of him.
"I reckon you're not him."
"My father is not in," Christopher answered him.
"Well, there's lovely," the peculiar dark-haired man resigned, happy to turn from the door again and leave. "Good day, sir."
"Well, aren't you the dastardliest of dastards?" Christopher accused the elusively elusive man. "Playing on the bell for sport? Have you no respect for a grieving family in mourning?"
The man stopped walking at that.
Appearing to sigh deeply, as he weighed the odds of staying longer there himself...before gradually turning back to face Christopher.
"Your father penned me several letters," the man answered him. "And...I've gotten none too much sleep, knowing that I was unable to answer even one of them. And so, before my conscience drags me down to the devil, I have come here to tell him what I'd always known. That is...to let him know exactly how it was his son James had died."
"Oh, dear sweet Mary," Annie whimpered into her handkerchief, making Christopher instantly regret that he had answered the door so abruptly without escorting his stepmother to a private room first.
"Do you mean to say that he is really gone?" she whispered breathily. "Our James?"
"We were informed that my brother is only 'missing at sea'," Christopher said firmly. "We haven't given up hope that he'll be home to us soon."
"And how many more days will you count before you know he never will?" the visitor asked him quietly. "It's a month to the night she went down, sir."
"I'm telling you, it doesn't sound right for our James. I know my brother," Christopher persisted stubbornly. "I know his skill as a mariner. And I know even better that he will find a way to pull through and come home to us. Until he does...Until he comes through our door one way or other-by his own feet or carried in by another-I will not entertain speculation, sir. What proof do you have to say he's dead, I'd like to know? Who, might I ask, areyou?"
"Lowe," the Welshman answered curtly. Though not out of agitation for the man at the door anymore, who hauntingly resembled the English officer he knew as Jim Moody. But for putting himself up to this damningly awkward crusade of 'doing the right thing' in the first place. "Harold Godfrey Lowe, of White Star. James is my...The James Moody I'd known was a good man. So, damn it all to hell, if they contempt me for it. Let the tusses hunt me down to the end. I won't belt up and hold my peace about what happened that night. If that's not what you wanted to hear from me, then I'll say it again. Good day to you, sir."
Christopher chuckled quietly to himself, as he took a moment to consider the bold as brass flippant man at their door who bravely called himself 'Lowe, of White Star'.
"White Star, you say?"
"Ididsay. I'm not being funny."
And whether it was by spot-on observation, or having enough experience tending to the Moodys' door to know when there was trouble abrewing, Mr. Evans quickly shot out his arm over Christopher's chest, catching the young Moody just before he could tackle the unflinching Welshman calledLoweto the ground.
"£20, you fucking bastards?" Christopher demanded, reaching into his inner pocket to throw an opened letter at Lowe. "And any bit you may deem necessary for expenses and land charges on the other side? I could have you shot dead for much cheaper!"
"Christopher, don't!" Annie cried, coming to Mr. Evans's aid to pull her stepson back. "We've lost our James and we won't go about things this way! Please, don't!"
"Why won't you look at it?" Christopher urged Lowe. "Will you not read the letter you bastards wrote me, sir? Can you not stomach the disgrace that you all are for this rank horrific act? No matter, I'll read it for ye."
And then Christopher flicked open the letter.
"It reads, 'From the bosses at Ismay Imrie & Co.
"Dear Sir,
"We have your further letter of the 6th instant, and while we will be prepared to transport the remains of your brother across the Atlantic to either Liverpool or Southampton we regret that it is not possible for us to do any more.
"Should you after further consideration desire the remains of your brother to be returned will you kindly telegraph us in the morning at the same time sending us a deposit of £20 for any expenses and land charges on the other side and we will at once cable New York asking then to arrange this if practicable.
"We also think it right to point out that the arrangements and expenses for taking charge of the remains after arrival of the steamer at Liverpool or Southampton would be on your account."
"I amnotits author," Lowe cut in to the unhinged Moody.
"I don't give one blimmin' 'eck who you are! If you're one of the dogs from White Star, you limey, greedy bastards are all the same in my eyes! What are you lot doing to find my brother?" Christopher demanded of Lowe. "Just because he isn't a Rockefeller, or an Astor, or a Dewitt, he's nobbut rubbish gone adrift in the ocean to you? Because he isn't some rich man's son who can pay you a ridiculous sum of money to return him to his family? He's one of your own bloody officers, for God's sake! My brother has already paid enough to White Star with his very life! How can you lot treat his memory so lackadaisy? We deserve as much closure as the well-off do!"
"If you would kindly shut up long enough for me to bloody explain, you might have it," Lowe shot back at him.
"It's too late for that!" Christopher swore. "The time for White Star to act was weeks ago, before James and that ship ever left Southampton! There weren't enough lifeboats onboard and that wasn't James's fault or any of the other families who have lost someone due to your inexcusable negligence. It's White Star who must be held accountable. My brother's blood is on your hands."
"Damn you!" Lowe broke at the edge of his resolve. "How many ruddy letters will you send me before its plain blimming clear? I let him go! I told him to get himself away in the bloody boat, and he didn't, and that was his choice! There was nothing more I could fucking do to save him, I tell you!"
And whether he was moved by the shocked silence from the Moodys that followed his brute expletives, or the boiling over of his own regret cutting down the best of him, Lowe remembered this was not the place to vent his frustrations and got ahold of himself, dropping anchor on his high seas invective.
"James went forth as his own man," Lowe's tone softened hauntingly. "And there was nothing I could do. I haven't stopped bloody thinking about it since...So, if you're telling me that coming here to confess what happened still isn't enough for you, then I have nowt else to give you. That James alone chose to stay when he might've been saved is your own peace to make now. Scores of men die at sea in our profession, and James has gone away with the best of them."
And after seeing the brutally honest way Lowe's words cut into his broken-hearted family, James could hardly stomach keeping himself hidden up in the loft. He took a step toward the staircase, knowing he needed to get down there and clear this whole thing up once and for all.
Until he stopped again, hesitating.
Remembering that he was no longer a self-made modern man of the future and that there were rules to this sort of social occasion.
Feeling veryEdwardianagain in minding his etiquette, when he considered that he was still very much skulking around naked in a man's dressing robe, and now that Lowe had turned up, how was he to navigate such an awkward conversation with three people at once?
Apologize to Miss Annie for being half naked, apologize to Christopher for not actually being "dead", apologize to Lowe for not following orders on Titanic, and apologize to them all for how daffy it sounded in conclusion, when James blamed his mysterious disappearance all on a woman's necklace?
A bit much for just one go at it, James should say.
Miss Annie's poor old heart surely couldn't take it.
And James much preferred anyway that his long-awaited reunion with his family be personal, where they all could feel and say what they wished without worrying about spectators.
After all, the Moodys were a very private family.
So, as much as he wanted to make their pain stop at once, James knew that Annie and Christopher would appreciate it more if he waited until their guest was gone before he made his presence known.
"Scores?" Christopher whispered in answer to Lowe, hardly showing in his face the tempest of conflicting emotions ripping apart that world of innocence he once knew before all this. "He's only just a number to you, isn't he? But to us, sir...to us...he is everything. He was nobbut 24, and he had his whole life ahead. You can't tell me 'it's just the way of sailors to die like this', when this, sir, was entirely preventable.No oneshould die like this. And in honor of my brother's memory, I will fight so no one else does. I won't stop until I've dragged White Star down even lower than its god forsaken ship."
Annie rested her hand on her son's shoulder with a reassuring squeeze, as if to tell him that though she was in the same place as his pain, it was time he let it go long enough for this man from White Star to have his say.
"We will never stop searching for James. Our hearts are broken, and they will always be with him," she told Lowe. "But I believe I can speak confidently for my husband in that you are most welcome here, sir...No matter what news you're here to bring us. Do come in. Mr. Evans has just put on the kettle."